Nakamichi Dragon Tape Deck — Grade C
£5,000.00
The Nakamichi Dragon is widely regarded as one of the finest cassette decks ever made. Fully functional examples are becoming increasingly rare. While legendary for its performance, the Dragon is a complex machine that inevitably requires servicing over time. Restoring a deck of this caliber is no small task – it’s truly a labor of love.
In this unit, we replaced all consumable components, including the azimuth belt, mechanism belt, drive wheel rubber, and both idler reels with springs. The deck has been thoroughly cleaned, lubricated, demagnetized, and fully tested to ensure proper performance.
Overall, the condition is near-excellent, with minor signs of previous use. There is a small scratch on the top panel, visible only upon close inspection.
- Description
Description
The Nakamichi Dragon is an audio cassette deck that was introduced by Nakamichi in 1982 and marketed until 1994.
The Dragon was the first Nakamichi model with bidirectional replay capability and the world’s first production tape recorder with an automatic azimuth correction system; this feature, which was invented by Philips engineers and improved by Niro Nakamichi, continuously adjusts the azimuth of the replay head to minimize apparent head skew and correctly reproduce the treble signal present on the tape.
The system allows the correct reproduction of mechanically skewed cassettes and recordings made on misaligned decks. Apart from the Dragon, similar systems have only been used in the Nakamichi TD-1200 car cassette player and the Marantz SD-930 cassette deck.
